


Band of Brothers

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Brotherly Love, Childishness, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Sobriety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: Owen has an opportunity to reflect on the joys of friendship and fraternal love.





	

As the door closed over behind him, Owen heaved a thankful sigh. He'd never been so pleased and relieved to leave a bar in his life.

 _Four hours_ they'd just spent in that place. Four long, tedious, painful hours. To be fair, the first three hours had been pretty good, but the last sixty minutes had been total and utter hell.

It wasn't that he didn't like bars. Far from it. Some of his fondest memories were of him and the rest of the Sidewinder guys putting away shots and beers in watering holes all over the world.

It wasn't that he didn't like this particular bar. One-Eyed Mike's wasn't the classiest joint in town, but they'd all been in plenty of less elegant places. And at least this time, everyone had left their ferrets at home.

It certainly wasn't because he didn't like his drinking companions. Ty, Digger, Nick and Kelly were his badass band of Recon brothers, as precious to him as his actual kin. He loved them all dearly, and there was nothing any of them could do that would ever alter that fact, although Nick's insistence on supporting a team as lame as the Sox sometimes stretched his tolerance to the limits.

The reason for Owen's immense relief was far simpler and less exciting than any of these explanations.

Twelve hours ago, in a Responsible Adult Moment he'd long since come to regret, he'd decided he would spend the night as sober as the proverbial judge. He had an extremely important business meeting in Chicago tomorrow morning, and the only way he'd been able to make it to this Sidewinder reunion was by booking a flight out of BWI at an utterly ungodly hour.

Twenty years ago, he would have tackled both a hard night's drinking and a disgustingly early start without even breaking a sweat. He would likely have rolled straight out of one right into the other, with maybe a quick shower and a packet of mints in between to keep him going.

But he was on the wrong side of forty now, as Riley was so fond of pointing out. Waking up at the crack of dawn after a couple of hours of sleep was already going to be hard enough. Waking up at the crack of dawn after a couple of hours of sleep, five shots of primo tequila and at least seven bottles of beer would have been a Herculean task, even for a former marine.

Adulting. What a _truly_ wonderful thing.

It wouldn't have been quite so bad if Zane had been able to come along. The two of them could have taken themselves to the rational, sober end of the table, and talked about whatever popped into their rational, sober minds.

Unfortunately, a burgeoning cold and a rapidly approaching accounting deadline had forced the Texan to give the night out a miss. He'd no doubt spent the evening organizing the bookstore's returns before tucking himself up in bed with a man-sized box of tissues and a bottle of Tylenol Cold and Flu.

A shame, really. He still didn't know Ty's husband as well as he should, and this would have been a great opportunity for the two of them to _really_ talk. He made a mental note to follow up on that idea the next time he was back in town.

Something stirred to life in his pants. Sadly, it was only his phone, alerting him to an incoming text.

He slowed his pace slightly, deliberately dropping back from the group and wrestled his phone out of his jeans. The text was from Riley, letting him know she was heading to bed, sending him love and reminding him to get some sleep. He sent a quick message back.  _Love u too, babe. Going to bed now. Still sober! Yay me. Sleep well, talk soon._

God, he couldn't wait to marry that woman. Although, if that was his plan, he should probably think about buying a ring. Oh, and maybe proposing to her as well. That was the usual order of things.

He jammed his phone back into his pocket, looked up to find the rest of the team, froze completely still and frowned.

What the shitting shit was _this_?

A short distance up ahead, Ty, Nick, Digger and Kelly were standing completely still, staring at a mark on the ground. He was just about to shout out to ask them what the fuck they were doing when they suddenly started to move. As a unit, almost as if they'd been tied together at the elbows and knees, they shuffled a foot or so to the left, then back a foot or so to the right, then surged straight ahead.

Okay, this was getting seriously fucking weird, now.

As he started moving to catch them up, Owen had a horrible thought. Had someone—either one of the Sidewinder guys or another patron at the bar—slipped something into the booze while they were all looking the other way? Were the guys following a hallucination that only those who'd drunk the tequila were somehow able to see? He sincerely hoped not. Being the only sober member of the group was already annoying enough. Damned if he was going to be the only one not tripping serious balls as well.

When Owen was fifteen feet away, Ty let out a piercing squeal, pointed madly off to his right and ran to the other side of the road, with the other three members of the team trailing not far behind. The boys had barely reached their destination before Nick emitted a primitive grunt, then smacked Ty firmly on the chest and pointed back the way they'd come. Just when he thought it couldn't get any weirder, Digger and Kelly started stamping various random spots on the ground, as if they were squashing giant ants or trying to extinguish invisible flames.

Feminine laughter drifted down.

Owen looked up and saw two young women leaning out of a window on the second floor. One of them was drinking a beer, the other one was waving around what looked like a silver wand.

No, that wasn't right. 

It wasn't a wand.

_It was a goddamn fucking laser pen._

He followed the delicate beam of light from the window all the way down to the ground, to the red spot dancing on the sidewalk in the middle of four pairs of feet. As he watched, the owner of the silver wand suddenly jerked her hand to the right, driving his dumbass, drunken friends into another phase of their futile quest.

Jesus Christ. Was this actually happening, or was he having a waking dream? Could anyone, much less a group of battle-hardened Recon marines—men who'd been christened in blood and fire—seriously be this fucking dumb? Four grown-ass, forty-something men, each of whom was highly trained in various skills and capable of killing almost with a single thought, chasing after a laser pointer like a clowder of window-licking cats.

He honestly thought he'd seen it all, but apparently not.

The fact that everyone was participating made him quietly wince in shame. He expected behaviour like this from Ty, and maybe even from Kelly as well, depending on what he'd recently smoked. But Nick of all people should really know much better than this. He was supposed to be one of the saner members of the group, insofar as that word could ever apply. And what about Digger? What in the seven hells was _that_ all about?

Fuck this shit. He was never, _ever_ doing this again. Next time, he was either staying back at the house with Zane or drinking as much as the rest of the team, his meeting in Chicago be damned.

He folded his arms across his chest, and in finest Tyler Grady fashion, slowly attempted to work himself into an indignant huff. But he just couldn't do it, no matter how long or how much he tried. He couldn't bring himself to be mad at his friends, or for that matter, the woman who'd prompted all of the fun. It wasn't her fault the Sidewinder boys sometimes had the collective intelligence of a sack of buns.

He turned his gaze to the window again, caught the attention of the woman holding the nefarious tool and gave her a jovial wave. She grinned, gave him an equally jovial wave in return and put her pointer back to work.

Ty emitted another squeal and gestured at the darting dot, then with the rest of the squad in eager pursuit, stumbled over a knee-high fence and resumed his energetic hunt.

Owen sighed, smiled and shook his head. "What a bunch of fucking idiots," he reminded himself. But that was okay, because they were _his_ bunch of fucking idiots. He'd been to hell and back with these men, more times than he ever wanted to count, and whatever the future had in store for them, he would be with them 'til the end of the line.

"Don't any of you ever change," he murmured to them. "Because I love every one of you crazy bastards just the goddamn way you are."

Still smiling, he jammed his hands into his pockets and strode off to join his friends.


End file.
